Incremental not breakthrough

If you're truly innovative in what you offer, brilliant at what you do and good at communicating that, surely you won't have any competition.’ This approach is at the core of Seth Godin’s book the Purple Cow, and of course he is correct.

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with some stellar senior people about innovation projects my colleagues and I delivered in 2010. Rather proudly, half of the 10 initiatives were instigated or delivered by me (the relevance of that little nugget is purely for my ego and not the substance of the blog).

For me, I thought the value of our dialogue wasn’t in what we had delivered or even the ‘outcomes’ of delivering the initiatives. Although some are pretty sexy. No, the real value is in how the initiatives had been originated, implemented and overcome the challenges.

As I talked through initiatives that had cost from virtually nothing up to a million dollars, I reinforced that most projects were incremental to what we were already doing have therefore been more widely adopted, and those that were more disruptive, while attracting more interest, have not been adopted without on going intervention.

Sadly, what these global senior leaders, and I think most leaders in general, fail to appreciate is, incremental, all other things being equal, is more sustainable than breakthrough. And that most important. in achieving an incremental approach to innovation, organisations should enable everyone in the organisation to originate, implement and overcome challenges.

Innovation is not the exclusive domain of the guy in the corner with the iPad and job title, it should be in every colleague’s job description, annual objectives, scorecard or whatever format you use. Everyone should be charged with continually innovating, not to break through, but to incrementally improve our offer, deliver it better and communicate it more effectively.

Good schools, healthy bodies and now leaders in innovation.

It’s not often you see Government doing something that makes you think, wow, ‘I’d like a piece of that.’

I am continually in awe of what the social fabric Scandinavian countries have weaved for their citizens; mixed with a concern for how sustainable they can continue to be as globalisation increases.

In any case, these high taxation economies are renowned for their high standards of living, education and healthcare. And now, they are appearing to be streets ahead in innovation too.
Read this well written comment from Monday’s London Evening Standard and tell me you don’t wish the UK had a Nokia.

Oh, as someone that has been on the end of their ‘commercial’ policies, the dig at the Ordnance Survey made me smile too. http://tinyurl.com/6ck9jug

Who's that Brit?

Despite trips to the supermarket (due to Mrs’ Ryan’s aversion to shopping brought on by being the size of the Ocado mother ship), ferrying the youth to rugby/cinema and a 9 year old sleep over, I managed some quality time this weekend.

My favourite part of the whole lot was nearly 4 hours of unbroken Piers Morgan. Let me qualify that, I’m not his biggest fan; in fact he is clearly up himself. But let’s face it, we had seen the best of Larry King, and to see a fellow countryman taking on a US broadcast institution is a big deal. When interview no.3 (Condoleezza Rice) was asked if she knew who he was, could only manage “Of course, he’s a Brit.”

My suspicion this was a slur was confirmed when she went on to say “We all know the Brits can make the telephone directory sound intellectual when they read it.”

Putting that aside, the interviews with America’s largest media icons, Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern, were fantastic. Both difficult to interview for different reasons, both with their own constituencies these were difficult interviews. Taking them on first was with hindsight stroke of genius because he pulled it off, but had it gone the other way would have been foolhardy.

I wish the best of luck, and sincerely hoe he goes onto be an icon of the US media that rivals his first two interviews and the greatest talk show host of the all, his predecessor.

One top shop and being done up like a kipper

If 2010 didn’t bring enough change; I expect 2011’s to be even more far reaching. Anytime in the next few weeks will see the arrival the newest addition to our family, a baby.

Relax, I’m going to use this opportunity for a stream of emotional consciousness on becoming a father, but I would like to reflect on the phenomenal capital investment such a project is extracted from the un initiated. Determined not to fall into the trap of insisting that everything is the best money can buy, in spite of this being my first born, and of course not wanting to do everything on the cheap. The current Mrs. Ryan and I settled on Mothercare.

Mother care is a specialist UK retailer for all things baby and crossing all price points from what my Mum would 'call cheap and nasty' up to what my Dad would simply call 'you're joking!

For a start, I have to say the shop does exactly what it says on the tin, it really does have everything you need, and I think having spent an hour there, we now have everything we need, but also quite a few a lot we don’t need. But with all such brand experiences, it isn’t the store, stock, price or product that will stay with us, but the charming lady that stopped what she was doing to help us drain our credit card. Let’s call her Val.

With the charm of a young granny and the experience of a celebrity TV nanny, Val steered us around the store setting out only simple decisions for us to make at each stop, each one we felt was considered and informed. But none of this, remarkable, most good retailers can provide such service, in fact I was having the same discussion with a colleague about John Lewis and procuring a vacuum cleaner.

No, what made this experience stand out is the way we were snared. Our charming Mothercare protagonist, Val, who only entered our theatre of consumption because was asked a simple question about delivery, reeled us.

“How long do you have to go?” she asked innocently.

“About three and half months.” Was Mr’s Ryan’s honest answer.

Big intake of air sucked across the lips of a lady in her late 50’s with those tell tale lines that give away she once smoked, “Not much time then, we’d better get on.”

And so we proceed to live the Mothercare marketing team’s dream of clients that see them as a one stop shop. It’s only once we had paid and she booked out delivery Val’s cunning and guile become apparent,

“Well that should all be delivered in 4 days dears.” She said innocently

“Oh great” I said, knowing full well I had just doubled the hammering our flexible friend had already received thanks to Christmas and that a contender for Kent’s most glamorous gran’s had just done me up like a kipper.